In a paper which is yet to be peer-reviewed but has been submitted to the journal Reviews of Geophysics, they suggest that the Earth has been 0.65C warmer over the past 12 months than during the 1951 to 1980 mean, and that the global temperature for 2010 will exceed the 2005 record.

Hansen, credited with being one of the first scientists to study climate change, dismisses sceptics' claims that global warming "stopped" in 1998.

"Record high global temperature during the period with instrumental data was reached in 2010," he writes.

"It is likely that the 2010 global surface temperature ... will be a record.

"Global warming on decadal timescales is continuing without let-up ... we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.2C/decade that began in the late 1970s."